• Question: How old and where is the oldest tree in the world?

    Asked by anon-218610 to Shannah, Richard, Matthew (known as Kaan by, johnpaterson, Emma, Anna on 13 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Emma Markham

      Emma Markham answered on 13 Jun 2019:

      Great question. There is a Great Basin bristlecone pine, which is thought to be 4,850 years old and it lives in California, so it’s older than the pyramids! A cutting was taken from the tree and successfully grown in 2003.

      There is also the Giant sequoia, which are in a national park with the same name in California, the oldest is thought to be 3,500 years old. If you go to the Natural History Museum in London you can see the trunk of a Giant sequoia which has the different rings marked showing famous events in history which occurred during the trees life.

    • Photo: John Paterson

      John Paterson answered on 13 Jun 2019:

      The oldest tree is the Methuselah tree, which is the bristlecone pine that Emma mentioned. It’s called Methuselah because in the Bible he is the oldest man in the world. But he was only meant to be 969 years old and, like Emma said, the tree is thought to be 4,850 years old, so about 5 times as old as Methuselah!

    • Photo: Anna Gardner

      Anna Gardner answered on 14 Jun 2019:

      As the other scientists have named the oldest tree, I thought I could add some other fun facts!
      Old trees are really important as they can store lots of carbon, this is important because at the moment we have too much carbon in our atmosphere.
      Trees store up to 70% of their carbon when they are old.
      This is important to understand because it means that it might be better to keep all our really old trees rather than just planting new trees (to help climate change). Planting trees is always a good idea, but we also need to make sure we do not cut anymore trees down too!

Comments